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Wrong Tomorrow (idlewords.com)
25 points by prakash on April 3, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



None to my knowledge has said "wow, I really got blindsided by this thing - maybe I should STFU". This strikes me as somewhat distasteful.

Nicely said! I'm betting however that the people who would know enough to say such a thing now, knew enough to keep their yaps more or less shut back then too. Most of the people smart enough to warn us, knew they were uncertain enough that they probably shouldn't.


What about Greenspan?


Greenspan did admit publicly that although he knew a crisis of sorts was coming, he didn't expect it to be so huge and systemic as it was. I think he said that if he had thought that it'd be this bad, he'd have done more to try to stop it.

So yes. His humility was very refreshing. Its a shame there weren't many more like him.

Edit: Here's a good link.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122476545437862295.html


But aren't you also struck by his naivete? His sincere belief that all these huge entities would protect the shareholders. The people in charge with performance based compensation which at the same time has no downside from too much risk, would protect the shareholders?

How was it not obvious to him, the chairman of the federal reserve, that this is guaranteed to go exactly as it has.

He had a front row seat at the LTCM fiasco, and apparently didn't learn much from it.




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